John Paul
Well-Known Member
So I'm finally going to do this online journal thing since I see how it would be a nice reminder to come back and look at the progress you make throughout all the projects we are going to do. Where to start???
When I moved from South Texas to Northern Virginia 13 years ago I was blown away by the genetic potential our family farm had for growing good deer in VA. Growing up in Texas everything is suppose to be bigger and better right? To say that I was a pig that landed in a big pile of happiness was an understatement.
I would consider myself your typical "green" land stewards the past 8-10 years on our farm. We started by putting in food plots, putting in more food plots, getting better at putting in more food plots. etc. We always felt that our deer suffered a nutritional deficiency late winter early spring so we felt that if we could just put in enough acres of food plots we could solve all the problems we felt we had. We ignored the 800 plus acres of pine cutovers that become a vast wasteland when they canopied and shaded out all the understory. We ignored the 100s of acres of close canopy forest we had and scratched our heads when we saw another century old white oak fall dead to the forest floor. I wondered why we had so many autumn olives, bush honeysuckle and cedars taking over parts of our farm that used to have more diversity and animal sightings when I first started hunting in Virginia around 2004.
To say I've seen the light is a HUGE understatement. When the "old site" was still up and running I could get lost for days reading about food plotting advice from Lickcreek or other gentleman that had been doing what i wanted to do before I was even born. I never read too much into the habitat section of the old sight because I knew we just needed to put in food plots and the rest would take care of itself, not exactly!
For some reason I have this appetite inside me now insisting I leave this land to my children or next owner better than it was when given to me and my wife. I always knew you were suppose to do that but now I have to practice that conviction.
And I have swallowed the Kool-aid on habitat/wildlife management but my next problem was my paralysis by analysis. Just what part of the 1000 pound gorilla do you bite off first? That is what lead me to contacting a habitat consultant after a lackluster Fall hunting season. After getting some suggestions from members on this site and listening to some Podcasts from prospective consultants I had Matt Dye with Land and Legacy come out to the farm for a 3 day powwow last month. What resonated with me from Adam and Matt was their emphasis on incorporating habitat work around living on a working cattle farms. To say the journey for our farm is just beginning is again a severe understatement. There is a LOT of work to get done but this is definitely going to be the start of many years of work that should be fun to bring to this forum. Please feel free to ask any and all questions. I'll leave this first post with the maps of the 4 different quadrants we broke the farm up into so we can attack little projects within each quadrant. It's a breakdown of the type of work L&L is proposing we want to do over the next 5 years.
Preserve and Mountain Tract:
When I moved from South Texas to Northern Virginia 13 years ago I was blown away by the genetic potential our family farm had for growing good deer in VA. Growing up in Texas everything is suppose to be bigger and better right? To say that I was a pig that landed in a big pile of happiness was an understatement.
I would consider myself your typical "green" land stewards the past 8-10 years on our farm. We started by putting in food plots, putting in more food plots, getting better at putting in more food plots. etc. We always felt that our deer suffered a nutritional deficiency late winter early spring so we felt that if we could just put in enough acres of food plots we could solve all the problems we felt we had. We ignored the 800 plus acres of pine cutovers that become a vast wasteland when they canopied and shaded out all the understory. We ignored the 100s of acres of close canopy forest we had and scratched our heads when we saw another century old white oak fall dead to the forest floor. I wondered why we had so many autumn olives, bush honeysuckle and cedars taking over parts of our farm that used to have more diversity and animal sightings when I first started hunting in Virginia around 2004.
To say I've seen the light is a HUGE understatement. When the "old site" was still up and running I could get lost for days reading about food plotting advice from Lickcreek or other gentleman that had been doing what i wanted to do before I was even born. I never read too much into the habitat section of the old sight because I knew we just needed to put in food plots and the rest would take care of itself, not exactly!
For some reason I have this appetite inside me now insisting I leave this land to my children or next owner better than it was when given to me and my wife. I always knew you were suppose to do that but now I have to practice that conviction.
And I have swallowed the Kool-aid on habitat/wildlife management but my next problem was my paralysis by analysis. Just what part of the 1000 pound gorilla do you bite off first? That is what lead me to contacting a habitat consultant after a lackluster Fall hunting season. After getting some suggestions from members on this site and listening to some Podcasts from prospective consultants I had Matt Dye with Land and Legacy come out to the farm for a 3 day powwow last month. What resonated with me from Adam and Matt was their emphasis on incorporating habitat work around living on a working cattle farms. To say the journey for our farm is just beginning is again a severe understatement. There is a LOT of work to get done but this is definitely going to be the start of many years of work that should be fun to bring to this forum. Please feel free to ask any and all questions. I'll leave this first post with the maps of the 4 different quadrants we broke the farm up into so we can attack little projects within each quadrant. It's a breakdown of the type of work L&L is proposing we want to do over the next 5 years.
Preserve and Mountain Tract:
